Is vaccinated meat safe to eat?

The sad alternative to vaccination

If a foot-and-mouth vaccination programme goes ahead, meat and milk from inoculated animals could end up on your dining table. Is this a cause for worry?

With the UK Government making ever more positive sounds about using vaccination in the fight against foot-and-mouth, the crisis could soon be brought home to British consumers - quite literally.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) sees no reason why the milk and meat from animals given immunity from foot-and-mouth shouldn't go on sale to the public.

Milk will have to be heat-treated

Such products would "be just as safe as the milk and meat from animals that haven't been vaccinated", says the FSA chief, Sir John Krebs.

The supermarket chains Tesco and Sainbury's have not ruled out stocking their shelves with the items although the Daily Mail has suggested this might be because they don't want to be seen "putting the final nail in the coffin of farmers".

The Ministry of Agriculture and the FSA are at pains to point out that even meat taken from livestock with foot-and-mouth disease does not pose a risk to humans.

However, following a string of food health scares from salmonella in eggs to mad cow disease (BSE), are UK consumers willing to swallow foot-and-mouth vaccinated food?

Question of trust

Many shoppers and retailers shunned genetically-modified produce (dubbed Frankenstein foods by their critics) despite scientific assurances that the products were safe.

Rules governing vaccinated livestock

Only heat-treated milk could be sold

In first 30 days after vaccination, meat must be GB-stamped, kept separate from other meat, transported in sealed containers and heat-treated

Following 30-day period, fresh meat must be deboned or matured for at least 24 hours before human consumption

Source: Maff

A quarter of Britons suspect that government information on food safety is unreliable, according to a recent FSA survey. So, on the face of it, the omens are not good for foot-and-mouth vaccinated foods.

The crisis has witnessed a rise in the number of those cutting meat from their diet entirely. A poll conducted for BBC Radio 4 suggested one-in-four of the nation's vegetarians had only turned away from meat because of the current crisis.

Guy Attenborough, of the Meat and Livestock Commission, the UK's meat industry body, says such figures are misleading.

"With the kind of media coverage foot-and-mouth has been getting a few people are going to be put off."

Dip in sales

Mr Attenborough likens this effect to the 4% dip in UK beef sales last year when France's BSE woes made the headlines. "As soon as it was off the news agenda consumption levels recovered."

British meat can no longer carry the EU stamp

However, unlike BSE, Mr Attenborough is confident the British public is fully aware that foot-and-mouth poses no human health risk.

"One has got to credit the consumer with a level of intelligence. People understand this particular disease doesn't affect humans."

But research by his employer found a quarter of us still harbour the "slight" concern that foot-and-mouth may jump to humans.

Will those skittish about the risks of eating vaccinated items be able to avoid them? It seems not. Sir John Krebs has said no special labelling will be used to mark out the produce.

One of many injections

Cattle are the only animals likely to be targeted for vaccination, and since they already receive several of injections which go unlabelled, Sir John does not see why foot-and-mouth jabs should be treated any differently.

Rules are for disease control purposes, not food safety, says Maff

The foot-and-mouth inoculation was tested a decade before the current outbreak and given a clean bill of health by the same people who approve other animal injections.

"It has been in very widespread use around the world for many years. Millions of doses have been given and no one has ever detected an effect on human health through the food chain."

However, the foot-and-mouth crisis has already forced one labelling change on the industry. With our exports frozen, the European Union symbol on British meat has been replaced by a "GB" stamp, so the origin of the meat is immediately clear.

This is a precaution to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth to livestock in other nations, not to safeguard the health of foreign consumers, says Mr Attenborough.

Before you even consider giving your favourite ready meal lasagne a miss or switch from semi-skimmed to soya milk, Mr Attenborough says that even if the vaccination programme goes ahead it will involve a tiny proportion of the nation's cattle and then probably only dairy herds which do not enter the food chain after slaughter.

Why? These milkers are usually more than 30 months old, and thus subject to BSE precautions.